[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 64 (Tuesday, April 26, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2450-S2451]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       AMENDMENT NO. 3202 TO THE ENERGY POLICY MODERNIZATION BILL

  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I am very pleased with the Senate's show 
of support for the Isakson-Bennet amendment, which was a modified 
version of the Sensible Accounting to Value Energy Act. We have been 
working on this bill together for more than five years.
  The SAVE Act simply creates a voluntary program to encourage people 
to include energy efficiency in the purchase price of a new or existing 
home. It allows sellers the option of providing a HUD-qualified energy 
efficiency report to prospective buyers who are applying for a home 
mortgage. If that loan is backed by FHA, the energy efficiency of the 
home and the cost of a borrower's future energy bills will be taken 
into account by the mortgage lender.
  Builders and manufacturers are constantly creating new energy 
efficient products and features, but the enhanced value and energy 
savings achieved by these innovations are not fully realized by the 
market. The passage of this amendment will for the first time provide a 
mechanism to account for those saving and unlock demand for new energy 
efficient products

[[Page S2451]]

and significantly reduce homeowner's utility bills.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, would the Senator yield for a question?
  I would like to commend my colleagues for their support for energy 
efficiency programs that reduce residential energy consumption. 
Expanding the use of these technologies in our everyday lives is a 
commitment to our future and will create jobs in Ohio.
  However, I am also concerned that adjusting underwriting or appraisal 
requirements without sufficient protections to ensure a family has the 
ability to repay their loan could have unintended consequences that put 
our housing market at risk, which I know is not the intention of the 
sponsors.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I would like to associate myself with the 
comments made by the Senator from Ohio. I also support the need for 
greater energy efficiency and applaud the sponsors of this amendment 
for promoting greater energy efficiency. At the same time, I do have 
some concerns.
  Specifically, I am concerned about whether and how potential energy 
savings can safely be incorporated as part of the mortgage underwriting 
process at the FHA, especially when there may not be a consensus on how 
to define and accurately quantify future energy savings.
  Another concern is the interaction of estimated energy savings in the 
underwriting and appraisal processes. This could happen because the 
SAVE Act requires expected energy cost savings to be used as an offset 
to certain regular expenses, such as property taxes, while also 
requiring the estimated energy savings of a home to be added to the 
home's appraisal. While not the intent of the authors, I am concerned 
that this could tilt the mortgage market towards more expensive 
products without adequate safeguards to protect borrowers.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, we would ask the sponsors of this amendment 
to work with us to ensure that we can accomplish our shared goals of 
encouraging investment in energy efficient homes while also maintaining 
a safe and sound mortgage market for homebuyers.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, moving forward, we intend to work with the 
Senate Banking Committee and HUD to address any technical or 
substantive concerns that have arisen. Specifically, it is our 
intention to ensure that FHA has the ability to insure loans for energy 
efficient homes while also including protections to maintain accurate 
evaluations of a borrower's ability to repay.
  Additionally, as this amendment is being implemented, we understand 
that HUD's ability to test and modify the savings that may be counted 
should be considered. In fact, we considered these concerns while 
drafting this legislation. The methodology we included for measuring 
energy efficient savings is an ANSI certified standard and the most 
widely accepted technology in today's marketplace. Over 1 million homes 
have already been energy rated using this technology. And this is the 
same underlying technology successfully utilized by the EPA's Energy 
Star program.
  Again, we are pleased that the Senate passed our amendment, and we 
look forward to working with the Banking Committee and HUD on 
improvements.

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